"I have heard talk and talk, but nothing is done"
About this Quote
Talk is the oldest trick power plays on the powerless: a performance of concern that costs the speaker nothing. Chief Joseph’s line lands like a weary gavel because it’s not poetic lament so much as an indictment of process itself. “I have heard talk and talk” doubles the word to mimic the droning repetition of negotiations, promises, “councils,” and treaty language that sounded official while functioning as delay. The cadence captures what it feels like to be kept waiting by people who control the calendar, the paperwork, and the guns.
The sting is in the second clause: “but nothing is done.” Joseph doesn’t argue policy; he measures morality by outcomes. In the late 19th-century U.S. expansion across the Northwest, federal representatives repeatedly spoke in the language of agreement while the material facts on the ground kept shifting - settlers arriving, land being claimed, boundaries redrawn, pressure escalating. Against that machinery, Indigenous leaders were forced into a rhetorical arena designed to neutralize them: hearings, signatures, “understandings,” all framed as civilized exchange, all backed by coercion.
Subtextually, Joseph is refusing the idea that dialogue is automatically virtuous. He’s exposing “talk” as a tool of asymmetry: the colonizing state can afford endless conversation because delay serves it. For a people being displaced, time is not neutral; every postponed decision is another loss made irreversible.
The line still reads contemporary because it describes a familiar political theater: empathy without action, consultation without consent, words substituting for repair. Joseph’s restraint is the point. He doesn’t shout; he counts. And the ledger doesn’t balance.
The sting is in the second clause: “but nothing is done.” Joseph doesn’t argue policy; he measures morality by outcomes. In the late 19th-century U.S. expansion across the Northwest, federal representatives repeatedly spoke in the language of agreement while the material facts on the ground kept shifting - settlers arriving, land being claimed, boundaries redrawn, pressure escalating. Against that machinery, Indigenous leaders were forced into a rhetorical arena designed to neutralize them: hearings, signatures, “understandings,” all framed as civilized exchange, all backed by coercion.
Subtextually, Joseph is refusing the idea that dialogue is automatically virtuous. He’s exposing “talk” as a tool of asymmetry: the colonizing state can afford endless conversation because delay serves it. For a people being displaced, time is not neutral; every postponed decision is another loss made irreversible.
The line still reads contemporary because it describes a familiar political theater: empathy without action, consultation without consent, words substituting for repair. Joseph’s restraint is the point. He doesn’t shout; he counts. And the ledger doesn’t balance.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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